Книжка-2

1965 Book 2 Contents

The most striking feature of any lyric is contemporaneity. In poems, the poet depicts his feelings, thoughts and experiences, and he lives in society and this is reflected in his soul and consciousness. Every lyric in 99 cases out of a hundred is contemporary. We may not find historical figures, facts and designations in the poems of poets, but they contain - reflected from different artistic positions - characteristic features of reality, something of the spirit and atmosphere of the era is present. The fact that outside of society there is no and cannot be art does not mean that contemporaneity automatically arises in the works of the poet. No, it is introduced by him first of all through ideas and images, and then through all the verbal-expressive requisites, formal features, style, structure of the verse, etc. An important role in the manifestation of contemporaneity in the writer's work is played by his worldview, his ideological and aesthetic understandings. Therefore, when we talk about the principle of modernity, we cannot help but touch upon the issues of worldview and method, of ideology and mastery, of language and style, etc. Modernity is an aesthetic category that encompasses works of art in their entirety - both content and form. It is an intrinsic, essential feature that is carried not only by the plot or the concluding verse, but by the pathos of the work, by its tonality. Here, in the pathos, in the general sound of the work, the ideological and artistic elements are inseparably combined and form a single aesthetic whole.

Before us is one of the poet's early poems: "After the Interrogation" from his first collection of poems "My Songs". It is crafted sparingly. The point blossoms from the sparse emotional atmosphere at first glance. The sincerity of the experience overcomes the abuse of external effects. The words seem to have no other meaning than the ordinary one, but acquire the power of suggestion.

Laughter is usually the weapon of a person placed in an unequal position, it is the revenge of the defenseless. In the social hierarchy and the official table of ranks and ranks, it rushes in uninvited and unwanted, to turn everything upside down, to turn the figures of despotism and power into wax figures, puppets in a comedy theater. Laughter does not recognize respect, does not tolerate authoritarian restrictions, it is the antithesis of everything inflated, pompous, majestic. Its expansiveness acts revolutionaryly, as it equalizes magnitudes, utters hidden and suppressed truths, declares with the ease of a child that the king is naked. Laughter demolishes idols, crowns and halos, because, in the words of Herzen, "to make a person laugh at the god Apis means that he - the god - is dethroned from his sacred rank and made into a simple bull." Smirnensky's red laughter flows freely and infectiously, directed in many directions and at various addresses. In his feuilletons and zlobodnevy, the poet has created a rich gallery of comic images. His observant gaze, the rapier of his wit penetrates everywhere: in parliament and behind the scenes of political deals, in the office of the big merchant and in the boudoir of the bourgeois lady. From there he drags out the distinguished gentlemen and ladies undressed, shows them to us without makeup and disguise.

Bulgarian-Byzantine cultural and literary ties continued for several centuries. Undoubtedly, the main and dominant influence here was the penetration and influence of Byzantine literature on Bulgarian medieval literature throughout its historical development. Still as strong, although slightly transformed, it continued during the difficult period of Turkish slavery. And the borrowings and ties continued because they had a socio-economic and political prerequisite. Every nation suffered the influence of other nations and, above all, of its neighbors. Moreover, "every society lives in its own special historical environment, which can be - and indeed often is - very similar to the historical environment surrounding other nations, but can never be and never is identical with it". 1 Nations can exert mutual influence only when there are certain points of contact in their social, political and cultural life. The strength of the influence is determined by the degree of community between them. "The influence of the literature of one country on the literature of another is directly proportional to the similarity between the social relations of these countries. It does not exist at all when this similarity is equal to zero... This influence is one-sided when one people, due to its backwardness, cannot give anything to the other either in terms of form or in terms of content... Finally, this influence is mutual when, due to the similarity of social life, and therefore of cultural development, each of the two exchanging peoples can borrow something from the other."

I first met Kiril Hristov (1875-1944) in the autumn of 1896, when I was a student at the University, and he had published his Songs and Sighs in the magazine Misl and in a separate booklet. He had just returned from Italy, where he had spent about a year as a student at a naval academy, and had renewed his friendship with Dr. Krastev, Pencho Slaveykov, Petko Karavelov and Aleko Konstantinov, in whom he had valuable patrons and friends. Having left the seventh grade of high school prematurely, he was now coming to pass his failed matriculation exam, in order to then enroll in the University as a law student. The subject of great attention in literary circles, he had become a favorite of a part of the youth with his lyrics, which revealed his passionate personal temperament and reflected the individualistic or social sentiments of a new generation that had begun to shake off the aesthetic prejudices of the older one. After his trip to Italy and other Western countries, Hristov stayed for a longer time in his homeland, changing various official positions, each more burdensome for him, in accordance with his will for an independent life and free creativity.

Years ago, a fellow writer, with whom we used to go to Paris to gather culture in our youth, spoke in the magazine "Izkustvo" about his meeting with the great French poet Paul Eluard during the troubled year of 1939. I remember even now that with his account of what happened, he not only revived in my mind some dormant memories of our stay in France, but also awakened in me a painful feeling of regret that often overwhelms me on such occasions - regret that due to clumsiness and bad luck I had missed something irreparable this time too. Fortunately, the future turned out to be more generous to me and wished to correct the mistake of the past: although very late, I had the opportunity not only to meet Eluard, but in connection with a common work and to get closer to him, to breathe for a short time his spiritual and creative atmosphere, and even to become an involuntary witness to his last hours. Because of all this, I have lived with his image and for years now I have felt an urgent need to share with you my impressions of the man and the poet, whom, not only because of the geographical distance between us, I once considered untouchable. Needless to say, long before I saw Éluard, I had already heard of him and was to some extent familiar with his poetry. But unfortunately, for reasons beyond my control, even this purely literary meeting also took place very late - at a time when the poet's name had gained wide fame not only in France but also far beyond its borders.

Between the two world wars, the idea became widespread that modern analytical prose, expressing an observation of complex human phenomena, was incompatible with the rural world, limited to traditional manifestations, incapable of renewal and entering the higher zones of the spiritual. The evolution of modern literature has been a process from the village to the city, from the simple to the complex. Such an opinion was once substantiated by Eugene Lovinescu, with the corresponding aesthetic motivations, and later Camil Petrescu formulated it in a decisive way. He wrote that an epic of the Proustian type, such as he would have desired and which is necessary in the era of philosophical relativism and rapid progress in the field of psychology, could not be created by depicting individuals whose manifestations are known in advance according to the laws of an extremely banal mechanism. George Calinescu gave an answer to this question, which is still very relevant today. The peasants, the critic said, have a certain attitude to the problems of existence and even to the universe, they have their own philosophy, expressed, however, in specific forms, interesting for literature that is interested in human destinies. The analogy seems distant and perhaps exaggerated. From here, however, it is important to remember that a modern epic, which walks with the progress of art and is interested in the inner peace of man, who passes from one type of civilization to another and separates, sometimes dramatically, from old inertias, cannot ignore the peasant world, whatever its means of studying the material.

"For us Spanish writers, there is only one kind of escape - escape into reality." The quote is borrowed from the book by the young Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo, "Problems of the Novel." Although formally this thought contains a paradox, a thorough examination of contemporary Spanish literature shows that "escape into reality" is its defining direction. And since this tendency is most clearly expressed in prose: fiction and drama, the subject of this article will be the new Spanish novel. The Spanish novel of the last ten years - this is enough to specify the concept of new. As for "Spanish", it should be noted at the very beginning that no one is able to exclude from Spanish literature, through censorship and prohibitions, the émigré writers who work in Paris, Mexico or elsewhere. They are Spanish writers like all the others, not to mention: perhaps more than all. Their works, published abroad in Spanish or other languages, form, together with what is published in Spain, the shape of contemporary Spanish literature.

After the end of the First World War (1914-1918), from which Bulgaria emerged defeated, crippled and with shattered national ideals, a desire for renewal through education and moral improvement arose in the bosom of the intelligentsia. Then the ideological currents manifested themselves and flourished: communism, anarchism, Tolstoyism, temperance and tourism. One of its apostles expressed this newness very well: "an awakening to spiritual life, a longing for something higher than that in which cares, everyday vanities and struggles oppress the soul." Invited by the board of trustees of the "Nadezhda" community center in Tarnovo to give several talks on my specialty, I accepted the invitation with some embarrassment; It seemed to me that the times were not at all suitable for lectures on biology and chemistry, and that the words of a laboratory worker would not resonate in hearts dried up by the current events of political disputes and worries about livelihood.

Recently, the book by Vitaly Zlidnev "Russian-Bulgarian Literary Relations of the 20th Century" was printed in Moscow as a publication of the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Academy of Sciences, 220 pages. Vitaly Zlidnev is one of the talented students of the unforgettable N. S. Derzhavin, who continue and deepen the tradition he created for active and comprehensive research into issues of history, literature and in general the spiritual activity of the Bulgarian people, illuminating them very often and depending on the development of Russian history and literature, with which the Bulgarian people have been firmly connected since time immemorial. At the Institute of Slavic Studies, and not only there, there are about a dozen relatively young researchers who know in detail individual eras of Bulgarian history and individual our historical figures and writers... It seems to me that I will not be exaggerating at all if I say that the Institute of Slavic Studies occupies a high, honorable place in the process of mutual acquaintance of the two peoples, where its activists often participate with the unique breadth and depth of Russian and Soviet researchers, with the unique humanistic pathos characteristic of them, with the nobility of true brothers and internationalists.

The interest that our literary studies show in our relations with our neighbors in the past is a proven fact. It testifies to the attention with which literary scholars in our country turn to the most beautiful and fruitful manifestations of friendship and amity between the Balkan peoples. In addition, this fact testifies to the expansion of the thematic perimeter of our literary studies; it is an expression of the aspiration of our literature to find its place in a broader literary context. Therefore, the first question that arises when we become acquainted with the recently published book on Bulgarian-Serbian literary relations in the 19th century is whether it meets the requirements of such an important and complex task. Konev's work consists of two parts. The first - "The Great Beginning" contains four chapters: 1. Literary exchange between Bulgarians and Serbs. 2. Translated and Bulgarianized works. Character and significance. 3. The creative path of P. R. Slaveykov and Serbian literature. 4. Serbian teachers in Bulgaria. Literary and cultural and educational activity. The second part, which is called "In support of realism in literature", includes the following chapters: 1. Encounters with drama. 2. Lyuben Karavelov in the development of the Serbian realistic short story. 3. Before the dawn of freedom.